What Happened to John Crutchley, the Suspected Florida Killer Known As the Vampire Rapist?

At the time of his arrest, John Crutchley was a married 39-year-old computer engineer for the Harris Corporation in Melbourne, Florida, a NASA contractor, according to the 1992 book Whoever Fights Monsters: My Twenty Years Tracking Serial Killers for the FBI by famed FBI criminal profiler Robert Ressler.

Raised in Clarksburg, West Virginia, Crutchley was reportedly dressed as a girl by his mother until age 5 or 6 (following the passing of his older sister before he was born) and he was severely abused by his parents, according to Ressler.

Crutchley himself said he was subjected to being beaten with a belt to the point of losing consciousness and having his fingers burned with an iron, according to The Orlando Sentinel.

He moved to Florida in 1983, according to Brevard County’s Florida Today.

Crutchley was noted as a “highly intelligent” man and considered “gifted” in the field of computer science, according to a 2003 case study on clinical vampirism and vampiristic behavior by The American Academy of Forensic Sciences. The school remarked, “At that time as a computer engineer, he had a high-level security clearance because of his work with government contracts.”

Later, when investigators searched his home, they found many “highly classified” government documents, including ones about naval weaponry. Federal agencies even considered opening an espionage case against him, according to Ressler.

Crutchley would later blame pornography for acquiring a blood-drinking fetish, according to The Washington Post.

Crutchley was eyed by authorities after a 19-year-old female hitchhiker from California flagged a motorist on the side of a Brevard County, Florida road, according to The Washington Post. She claimed that over a 22-hour period between November 21 and 22, 1985, Crutchley kept her locked up and bound at his Malabar home — about 75 miles southeast of Orlando on Florida’s east coast — repeatedly strangling and raping her.

During the horrific ordeal, Crutchley used surgical instruments (i.e. syringes) to drain nearly half of the victim’s blood for his own consumption, almost killing the woman in the process, as reported by The Tampa Bay Times. She narrowly escaped through a bathroom window after Crutchley left her handcuffed in the bathtub.

Crutchley later alleged she was “begging to be roughed up,” per the Post.

The prolonged torture occurred when Crutchley’s wife and son were away visiting relatives in Maryland, according to Ressler’s book.

When police searched Crutchley’s home, they initially found “a stack of credit cards, several inches thick,” and necklaces belonging to (mostly) women believed to be Crutchley’s past victims. According to Whoever Fights Monsters, Crutchley claimed the cards were left in his car by past hitchhikers and that the necklaces belonged to his wife.

“I was very glad [authorities] asked me to get involved in the case, because while the police knew they had caught a dangerous rapist, after I found out a few things about Crutchley, I thought it probable that they had a serial killer in custody,” Ressler stated.

At Crutchley’s office, authorities collected handcuffs, a handgun, ropes, homemade sex tapes of him and his wife, and a book titled The Dracula Syndrome, according to CBS St. Petersburg affiliate WTSP. His home was littered with IV needles, women’s locks of hair, dog collars, chains, small tubes, and hoses, per the Orlando Sentinel.

In 1986, Crutchley pled guilty to kidnapping, sexual battery with a deadly weapon, and multiple counts of sexual battery, according to court records reviewed by Oxygen.com. On August 8, 1996, he was released from prison after serving less than 11 years of a 25-to-life sentence, according to The Washington Post.

Upon his release, he was expected to enter a halfway house.

Yes, John Crutchley is suspected of killing dozens of women, though he was never convicted of murder. Some theorized he killed women in previously lived locations, including Virginia, Ohio, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., and around Brevard County, according to WTSP.

“There’s no crimes they can link me to,” Crutchley told reporters following his 1986 guilty plea, according to The Washington Post.

Crutchley remains a prime suspect in the disappearance of 25-year-old Deborah Fitzjohn in Fairfax County, Virginia, who was last seen visiting Crutchley’s trailer home on January 27, 1978, according to The Washington Post. Her skeletal remains were found buried months later.

Crutchley came under suspicion for Fitzjohn’s death after a search of his Florida home yielded a business card belonging to the lead investigator on the case.

According to NBC Orlando affiliate WESH, the I.D. cards of six dead women were found in Crutchley’s possession upon his 1985 arrest and he is suspected of killing up to 30.

The July 1983 disappearance of Cocoa Beach model and actress Tammy Leppert and the March 1985 disappearance of Mims, Florida hitchhiker Patti Lou Volansky, were among the few suspected killings.

Still, there has never been enough of a concrete connection to charge Crutchley with murder.

John Crutchley was released for the 1985 rape and torture on August 8, 1996. However, as reported by the Los Angeles Times, he was arrested just one day later for marijuana possession, thus violating the conditions of his parole.

On March 30, 2002, Crutchley was found dead in his cell while serving another life sentence at the Hardee Correctional Institution for the drug conviction, according to the Orlando Sentinel. He died of asphyxiation after placing a plastic bag over his head in what investigators initially believed was an act of suicide.

Based on statements by other inmates, authorities ruled Crutchley’s death as an accident during autoerotic asphyxiation, the act of restricting oxygen flow to the brain as a means to heighten sexual gratification during masturbation.

He was 55 years old.